$32M
The gap everyone agrees must be closed
This is not a summary of what others proposed. It's a stand-alone plan. The premise is simple and stubborn: the people who teach and protect kids are the last thing you cut, not the first. Every dollar below comes from somewhere other than a classroom. Figures are realistic estimates for a district this size (~15,000 students, ~$257M budget); the district's business office can drop in the exact line items in an afternoon. Where a number depends on what's already being collected, a range is shown.
That a $32M hole in a $257M budget is not, at its core, a "too many teachers" problem. It's a "money in the wrong places" problem.
When a district hits a wall, the reflex is to count bodies and start cutting the biggest line — payroll. But payroll is the service. Cut the teachers and paras, and you haven't trimmed fat; you've cut the muscle that brings the money in. Because in California, funding follows students, and students follow good schools.
So this plan draws one hard line and then goes hunting everywhere else.
Everything that follows respects that line. Nothing below requires a teacher, para, or counselor to lose a job — several moves actually bring laid-off staff back by replacing pricier contractors.
The twelve moves sort into three families. Read them as one stack: each is a bucket under the leak.
Money you're already owed. Money you're overspending. Money you already own. Here's the whole stack on one page.
Even on cautious assumptions, the twelve moves deliver about $28M of the $32M in year one, with the slow-ramping pieces (solar, billing systems, full insourcing) closing the last stretch in year two. On the higher — but still realistic — end, the stack clears the whole gap immediately. Either way, zero classroom jobs are spent to do it.
Before cutting one dollar of service, collect the dollars the state and federal government are holding for you. This is the fastest, fairest money in the plan.
The deficit lives in the unrestricted general fund — the money with no strings. But the district also receives large restricted grants (federal Title I, special-ed IDEA, and state LCFF supplemental & concentration dollars) that must be spent on the very students it serves. With roughly half its students from low-income families and 90% from groups those grants target, many costs now paid from unrestricted money are legally payable from restricted money. Re-coding those costs to the correct source doesn't cut anything — it just stops the unrestricted fund from quietly subsidizing programs that have their own funding.
WHO: Chief Business Official + auditor · SPEED: fast (weeks) · RISK: low — charge only genuinely allowable costs · the single largest lever in the plan.
This is the move nobody puts on a slide because it isn't dramatic. It's just correct.
$5M – $10M reliefSchools can bill Medi-Cal for health-related services they already provide to eligible students — speech, occupational and physical therapy, nursing, assessments — through the LEA Medi-Cal Billing Option Program and School-Based Medi-Cal Administrative Activities. Districts routinely under-claim this by huge margins. With a high share of Medi-Cal-eligible students, the recovery here is real money for services that happen regardless.
WHO: Special-ed + business office, often via a billing vendor on contingency · SPEED: medium (sets up over a semester, then recurs) · RISK: low.
$1.5M – $3M / yrHere's the plot twist: the wellness centers that were on the chopping block can pay for themselves. California's new statewide behavioral-health fee schedule now requires Medi-Cal and commercial insurers to reimburse schools for counseling and mental-health services delivered on campus — at set rates, with no cost to families and no cumbersome time-study. The counseling the district already does becomes billable. Cutting these centers wouldn't just hurt kids; it would throw away a brand-new revenue stream.
WHO: Student services + business office · SPEED: medium (enroll, then bills recur) · RISK: low · directly protects the staff most at risk.
You don't close the thing that's about to start cutting you a check.
$0.5M – $1.5M / yrThree quiet ones that add up: charge the district's approved indirect cost rate to grants and the cafeteria fund (so the general fund stops eating their overhead); claim the full federal E-Rate discount (80–90% off internet and telecom for high-poverty districts); and file mandated-cost reimbursement claims the state owes for required programs.
WHO: Business office · SPEED: fast to medium · RISK: low.
$1M – $3M / yrThe district enrolls ~15,000 but is funded on ~13,700 in average daily attendance. That ~1,300-student gap is chronic absence — and every percentage point recovered is real, recurring money. Not "call the parents" (that's table stakes): target the specific chronically-absent students with attendance teams, transportation fixes, and same-day re-engagement, treating attendance like the revenue line it is.
WHO: Site teams + data office · SPEED: builds over a year · RISK: low · grows revenue without raising a single tax.
$1M – $3M / yrThese shrink the bill, not the staff. The trick is to attack the spending that sits behind the classroom door, not in front of it.
Community members and a trustee flagged it for months: outside contractors, especially in special education, often cost far more per hour than district staff doing the same work. So do the swap. For every contract where in-house is cheaper, hire staff to do it — including rehiring people who got layoff notices. This is the rare move that cuts cost and restores jobs at the same time.
WHO: Special-ed + HR + business office · SPEED: medium · RISK: low · turns layoffs into recalls.
Paying a vendor $90 an hour for work your own staff would do for $45 isn't a staffing problem. It's a procurement problem.
$2M – $4M / yrHealth benefits are one of the biggest cost drivers. You can cut the cost without cutting the coverage: competitively re-bid the health plan, join or optimize a regional risk pool (JPA) for buying power, steer toward equally-good lower-cost networks, and add stop-loss protection. Staff keep their coverage; the district pays less to deliver it. Because it touches a labor agreement, it's bargained, not imposed — and unions routinely say yes when the alternative on the table is layoffs.
WHO: Business office + benefits broker + bargaining teams · SPEED: medium (next plan year) · RISK: requires negotiation.
$2M – $4M / yrA district this size spends seven figures a year on utilities. Under a power purchase agreement, a solar company builds panels over parking lots and roofs at $0 capital cost to the district, and the district simply buys the power back cheaper than the grid. Pair it with LED and HVAC efficiency upgrades funded by energy grants. The savings ramp as projects come online — found money, every year, forever.
WHO: Facilities + business office · SPEED: ramps over 12–24 months · RISK: low (no capital outlay under PPA).
$0.5M – $1.5M / yrEvery large district leaks money on auto-renewing contracts and software licenses nobody uses. Competitively re-bid the largest non-staff contracts (transportation, food service, IT, copiers, consultants), join a purchasing cooperative for volume pricing, and run a license audit to cancel the "zombie" subscriptions. A 10–20% trim on discretionary vendor spend is routine.
WHO: Purchasing + IT · SPEED: fast to medium · RISK: low.
$1M – $2.5M / yrDistricts often budget salary for funded positions that sit empty for months — a vacancy sweep reclaims that money without affecting a single working person. At the same time, tighten the overtime and substitute-pay that quietly balloons in maintenance and operations (and which insourcing in Move 6 helps shrink anyway).
WHO: HR + business office · SPEED: fast · RISK: low · zero layoffs by definition.
$1.5M – $3M / yrDeclining enrollment is usually framed as a curse. Handled right, it's also a real estate asset — and a reason to shrink the top, not the bottom.
Fewer students means classrooms and even whole wings sit empty. Closing schools is slow and painful — so before that, lease the surplus. Childcare and preschool providers, the county, the community college, and after-school nonprofits all need space and will pay for it. And under California's Civic Center Act, the district can charge fair, cost-recovering rates when outside groups use gyms, fields, and auditoriums on nights and weekends — fees most districts set far too low.
WHO: Facilities + business office · SPEED: medium · RISK: low · keeps schools open while monetizing the empty rooms.
$0.5M – $1.5M / yrIf cuts to people must happen, they start at central administration — director, coordinator, and management layers — not at the classroom. A district serving ~13,700 in attendance should benchmark its administrator-to-student ratio against lean peers and flatten where it's heavy. This protects the rule at the heart of the plan: the people closest to kids are cut last, if ever.
WHO: Superintendent + board · SPEED: medium (notice rules apply) · RISK: medium (organizational) · keeps the line intact.
When money's tight, you trim the headquarters before you trim the front line. Most organizations do this backwards.
$2M – $4M / yrThat's the twelfth bucket under the leak. Add the three families together and the picture is clear: the gap can be closed from twelve directions, none of which is the classroom.
Conservative and optimistic estimates side by side. The honest version: cautiously, you clear most of the gap now; realistically, you clear all of it.
| # | Move | Low | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Family A — Collect what you're owed | |||
| 1 | Re-code allowable costs to restricted funds | 5.0 | 10.0 |
| 2 | Maximize Medi-Cal (LEA BOP + SMAA) | 1.5 | 3.0 |
| 3 | Bill behavioral health (wellness centers earn) | 0.5 | 1.5 |
| 4 | Indirect cost + E-Rate + mandated claims | 1.0 | 3.0 |
| 5 | Attendance / ADA recovery | 1.0 | 3.0 |
| Family B — Stop overspending on the back end | |||
| 6 | Insource overpriced contractors | 2.0 | 4.0 |
| 7 | Benefit-delivery redesign (coverage kept) | 2.0 | 4.0 |
| 8 | Solar PPA + energy efficiency | 0.5 | 1.5 |
| 9 | Re-bid vendors + kill zombie licenses | 1.0 | 2.5 |
| 10 | Vacancy sweep + overtime control | 1.5 | 3.0 |
| Family C — Use what you already own | |||
| 11 | Lease surplus space + Civic Center fees | 0.5 | 1.5 |
| 12 | Trim central administration (not classroom) | 2.0 | 4.0 |
| TOTAL ANNUAL ($M) | 18.5 | 41.0 | |
It's not only harsh — it's bad math. Here's the loop that makes classroom cuts the most expensive option of all.
Cut the classroom and you make schools worse, which pushes families out, which drops the attendance the district is funded on — which makes next year's deficit bigger. The classroom-first plan breaks the loop by protecting the very thing that earns the revenue.
You don't fix a revenue problem by destroying the thing that earns the revenue.
This is why the order matters. Collect what you're owed, cut what you overspend, use what you own — and the classroom never enters the conversation as a piggy bank. Solvency and good schools stop being a trade-off.
Mapped to the district's own deadlines. "Fast" items can show up in the June budget; "ramp" items land across the next school year.
| By when | Do this | Moves | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| By Jun 1 3rd Interim | Launch the cost re-coding review and vacancy sweep; start the contractor audit. | 1, 4, 6, 10 | Fast |
| By Jun 17 Budget adoption | Book the fast wins into the adopted budget; re-bid the biggest vendor contracts; cancel zombie licenses. | 1, 4, 9, 10 | Fast |
| Summer | Enroll in Medi-Cal & behavioral-health billing; open benefit re-design bargaining; sign the solar PPA; list surplus space for lease. | 2, 3, 7, 8, 11 | Ramp |
| By Sep 23 Solvency plan | Adopt the multi-year plan built from these 12 moves, sized to the full ~$24M out-year need too. | All | — |
| By Oct 8 Present to county | Show the county dollars-and-dates math: each move, its value, its timeline. Lift the "negative" flag. | All | — |
A plan you can trust says its own limits out loud. Here are this one's.
None of those caveats break the plan. They're the difference between a real plan and a fantasy. And even read at its most cautious, the conclusion is the same one the district's own approach never reached for:
The gap is real. The cuts to the classroom were a choice — and there was another one available the whole time.
Collect the Medi-Cal, behavioral-health, indirect-cost, E-Rate, and attendance money the district is already owed. Stop overpaying contractors, the power company, and auto-renewing vendors, and redesign how benefits are delivered without cutting coverage. Lease the empty rooms and trim the headquarters before the front line. Write it all down with dollars and dates, hand it to the county by October, and keep both local control and every teacher in the building.